Don't Worry
by Chaos's Prototype
Summary: I can't really remember right now, but I know you mean something to me, and I'll always hold onto that.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Happy Valentine's Day!**

**The main pairing is Ienzo/Naminé, and the story is pretty much a 'what if' concept. Basically, it's several years after the end of KH III, Ienzo and Naminé have gotten married a few years prior and are both somewhere in their mid-twenties. Unfortunately, Naminé's powers from when she was a Nobody aren't quite stable at this point, and cause her memory to be inconsistent. The fic follows the instances of her power being out of her control, which is why she doesn't always understand what's going on around her like she normally would. And the scenes **_**are **_**in chronological order, despite what it might seem.**

"Who _are _you?" Naminé demanded, jolting away from the bed—or, more accurately, the other body.

The man that she had been lying next to shifted a bit, before sitting up and gazing at her with eyes bleary with sleep. "Are you all right?" he asked, a definite tone of confusion in his voice.

He didn't seem hostile, at least. "Where am I?" she asked, less forceful this time, but still with the same sense of urgency.

"In our room," he answered, almost like it was a question. She barely heard him ask her, more concerned this time, "It wasn't a nightmare again, was it?"

"_O-our_?" She could hear the tremble in her own voice; could feel the sudden chill that came over her as the implications of his words sunk in.

"…Yes," he said, seeming vaguely hesitant. "Are you certain you're all right?" His gaze seemed more intent now. "If you aren't feeling well…"

"I'm fine," she answered immediately, almost a reflex.

The man sighed, running a hand through his long bangs and standing up. "I _told you _to let me know if it happened again." There was a pause before he added, sounding more like it was to himself than to her, "I'm certain there is still some way to fix this."

She wasn't sure why, but she found herself saying "I'm sorry". While she wasn't sure how she expected him to respond, she was still surprised when he snaped bitterly, "It's hardly _your _fault."

She offered another whispered apology before falling into silence.

They both stood there quietly for longer than they cared to guess at, neither saying a word as the minutes drifted by unnoticed.

"Naminé," she glanced up, startled out of her thoughts by the sound of her name. He was staring at her again. "Were you frightened?" While she wasn't at all sure what he was talking about, she could hear that his voice was soft again, caring even.

She _wanted _to say yes, she _wanted_ to ask him how he knows her name, but instead, as if by another's will, she found herself answering, "They don't scare me anymore."

He didn't seem to believe her answer. "I know what you've _told _me, what I'm asking you is—"

"I'm _not _afraid!" she shouted, though it was the voice that was her, but not, not at _all_, speaking again.

"I would _hope _not."

Something about this seemed strange, like she was missing something important and couldn't possibly know what he wanted from her otherwise. Despite this, he was looking at her expectantly, obviously expecting an answer she couldn't even begin to give. And so, she did the only thing she could think to do: She cried.

_XxXxXxXxXx_

"I need to go home," Naminé murmured sleepily, shifting slightly against Ienzo. "Isa doesn't like it when I stay out late." _Especially not with you_, she added silently. Not that Isa was particularly pleased when she was with _any _boy, friend or not. Lea had a tendency to laugh and jokingly call Isa a 'papa bear' (whatever _that _meant), but Isa would just shrug him off.

"They will not be bothered," he replied, his words slurring together a bit in a tired drawl.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Ien," she teased, ruffling his—admittedly already messy—hair, only to have him bat her hand away. "Promise."

Naminé began to leave, standing up and starting towards the door, only glancing back when she felt his hand around hers.

"_Naminé_, they will not be bothered if you stay the night."

She fidgeted uncomfortably, staring down at her feet. "But…they don't—"

"It's already past dark," he reminded her, giving a half-hearted gesture at the thinly veiled window. "There have more Heartless than normal lately, besides, particularly around the Square."

"We'll get in trouble," she argued hesitantly. She would, at least; he might not. Braig would tease them both if he finds out—and he always does—, but that was preferable to a punishment. Or a lecture, really.

"I suspect they would rather you remain here and be out of harm's way," he went on, even as she reluctantly sat back down next to him again. "You can return first thing in the morning, and feel free to let them know that it was my idea if they ask."

"Isa _always _asks, usually Lea, too," she mumbled.

"You shouldn't worry about it."

"You know I _try _not to…"

_XxXxXxXxXx_

"Do you remember when this was taken?" Naminé heard Ienzo ask. She looked over to see him holding a photo up to the light, apparently trying to find the date.

"Last year, I think," she answered, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look.

"How odd…"

"What is it?"

"I can't quite seem to—oh."

She flinched when he cuts himself off, grimaced when she felt the coil of guilt tightening around her stomach. "I'm sorry…"

His denial didn't do much to ease her worries. "I'm sure it's nothing. Everyone forgets something now and again." She could almost hear him going on with _"Perhaps us more than others, but…"_

"I swear I didn't mean to," she defended hurriedly. "I just—I can't control it at all anymore." There were tears blurring the edges of her vision, and part of her _hated _this. She hated knowing that she had only gotten worse at control with time, even if she has known others to have the same problem.

"It's fine," he told her, but the tension in his voice made it all too clear that it was not.

"I'm sorry." She couldn't help but cry, the tears tracing warm streaks down her face even as she tried to _somehow _draw the power back, to crush it, to just make it go _away_.

"I know you are," he whispered to her, and she felt his arm wrap around her waist and pull her closer to him. "You don't have to cry."

"I hate this…"

"Try not to worry; please?"

"I'm _trying_…"

_XxXxXxXxXx_

**A/N: So, to explain: In scenes one and two, Naminé remembers nothing about Ienzo or Radiant Garden, and doesn't remember how much time has passed at that they're married, respectively. The third scene, though, is her powers going on to affect Ienzo instead of her. It's not so strong against him at that point, though, just barely there. Oh, and the nightmare thing that gets mentioned in the first scene? Naminé's not exactly the only one whose (former) powers are unstable. However much sense that makes. ^^;**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Look! An update! It's not terribly long, sadly, but it does introduce some parts of the plot. So at least there's that? The first scene of this chapter takes place around a year or so after the end of the last chapter, and the second scene probably a few months after that.

* * *

"Are you sad, Mrs. Naminé?"

Naminé looked up at that, startled out of her thoughts. One of her young students, a first-grader, stood next to her desk, her head tilted curiously. "What?"

"You need to smile," the little girl said, leaning up on her tip-toes to peer over the desk at the sketchbook on top of it. She pointed at it. "Like in the picture."

Naminé glanced down at it. It was a drawing of a scene from several years ago, when she was still a teenager. Roxas and Xion stood next to the picture of herself, beaming at an imaginary camera. Half-done swirls of face paint covered each of their faces. It had been done for an event at their school and they had talked Naminé into trying to do it themselves. She could still see Isa's face, shocked and exasperated as Lea photographed them.

She had been trying to preserve memories like this, while they were briefly clear and vivid. If she had been able to manipulate memories with drawings as a Nobody, then maybe it would give her back some semblance of control over her powers now.

"I'm not sad," Naminé murmured, rubbing her thumb over the picture. "Just...worried."

"Why?" the girl asked immediately. "Can I fix it? I wanna fix it."

Naminé shook her head. "It's about my husband." Then, as a bit of an afterthought, "But it's wonderful that you want to-"

"Is Mr. Naminé sad, too?" the girl asked, cutting her off before she could finish.

She smiled a bit at that. She had let the youngest grades call her Naminé for so long that most of them seemed to think it was her last name. Standing up and closing her sketchbook, she started to lead the girl back to her table. "Why don't I help you with your tree?" she suggested, hoping to distract the girl enough that she would forget about her questions.

"Can I color it?"the girl asked, grabbing several markers off of the table and prompting a boy sitting there to try to snatch them from her.

"Give those back!"

"I'm only _borrowing _them!" she argued, turning her back to him and presenting them to her teacher happily. "I wanna use these!"

"Why don't we put a few of these back?" Naminé took several of them out of the girl's hands, setting them back on the table.

"But-"

"I'm sure he won't mind if you borrow this pink one," she said, holding it up in front of the girl for her to take.

"Okay..." the girl agreed reluctantly, frowning down at the markers left in her hands. "Can I keep the blue? I need to color the sky."

Naminé smiled. "Of course."

After that, the girl seemed content to work on her assignment, drawing shaky lines for tree limbs and coloring cotton candy leaves. She only asked occasionally if she had to color the grass green, or if she had to make the clouds white, or if Naminé could make Rei give her pencil back.

When it was time for her current class to leave and the next come in, Naminé went back to her desk, telling the new group of children—this time fifth-graders—to get their water color paintings off of the drying rack and continue working on them. They needed to be done before they left.

Once Naminé was able to return her attention to her own work, she started flipping through her sketchbook. She found it on her second search through the pages, the start of blank pages afterward alerting her. Looking down at it, she frowned. It didn't look at all familiar now.

But she wasn't finished, she still had more to do. She couldn't have forgotten. The people were recognizable—Roxas, Xion-, but nothing more. There were no other familiar faces or events. How was she supposed to stop, or even slow down the memory loss if she couldn't even remember long enough to finish _one picture_? It was like her powers were deliberately sabotaging her efforts, like they wouldn't even let her try.

Breathing deeply and trying to calm down, she attempted to recall another memory, one that was still clear. She would try again. She would just try again and again until she succeeded, no matter how many times it took or how much frustration she would feel if she failed.

Leaning against her hand, she searched through her scrambled mind, trying to find more than blank-faced people and fragments of conversations, to find features, or promises, or details.

She would do this. That was a promise, a feature, and a detail. She _would_.

* * *

"...has received the diagnosis of schizophrenia based on the determination of continued hallucinations, both auditory and visual, as well as intermittent periods of delusions, throughout the six-month period. He is currently considered able enough to continue as an out-patient. It has been requested that-"

"Stop," Ienzo ordered, face in his hands and entire body rigid with tension. "Just stop."

Aeleus set the report down on the table in front of him, frowning. "We have an agreement. We aren't allowed to-"

"They diagnosed me with a _mental disorder _and consider me unfit to continue research," Ienzo ground out, glaring up at the older man. "I think this warrants breaking the agreement."

"Except that telling them that the intermittent psychosis is really the deterioration of your powers approaching its end-phase would make it worse, you mean," Dilan grumbled from across the table. "They might go as far as to consider you dangerous, which is the entire reason for the agreement to _not _tell anyone about it."

"Then we should discuss this with Isa," he continued to argue.

"You know he would agree with us," Aeleus said.

"What am I supposed to do then?" Ienzo demanded. "Just resign myself to idiots trying to treat me for a condition I don't have and that I won't be able to continue-"

"They aren't idiots," Aeleus cut him off. "Wrong as it is, the symptoms do fit enough for it."

"They're still incorrect."

"So were Lea's doctors, but Isa and the Keybearers never explained it to them until they requested an autopsy," Dilan argued.

Ienzo sighed, eyes squeezed shut in irritation. "We had better not have reached the point of no return on this. There has to still be something we can do."

* * *

**A/N: Possible Artistic License: School and Possible Artistic License: Mental disorders and the diagnosing thereof. **As for the first, I'm not sure how realistic it is for a teacher to let their students, even young ones, call them by their first name. ^^; On the second one, while the diagnosis seemed like it could be made based on the criteria, there's very much a possibility that I'm wrong on that and if you know more about it, then please point out any mistakes on my part. (This applies to both.)

This chapter barely has any NamIenzo in it, and the only thing that could possibly qualify as that is implied. *facepalm* Sorry...

Re: Agreement: The ex-Nobodies in Radiant Garden made an agreement back when the powers of some of them (not all of them were effected) started causing problems and malfunctioning that they wouldn't tell other people what was happening unless absolutely necessary, which has only happened once. As always, questions regarding this and the rest of the chapter are welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: **Two posts in one week. Man, that's _crazy _for me. :o Scene two is Ienzo-centric PoV, the rest are Naminé as usual.

Also, just in case somebody stumbles upon this chapter without having read the previous one: If you haven't read at _least _scene two of the last chapter, scene two of _this _chapter will make no sense whatsoever (and it might be confusing even if you have...). Seriously. If you missed it or something, you need to read that first. It probably won't make any sense otherwise.

* * *

Clinging to the sheets, hearing an imaginary echo, and trying to forget—no, she should never try to do that, she forgot enough when she was trying to remember. Just remember it wasn't real, none of it. Just breathe slowly, evenly, and know it was only a dream. Know that it couldn't be real because you couldn't kill a dead man.

_I didn't even really like him that much...—_but it still hurt. She wished he would have stayed home.

With fear, worry, and anxiety all still stumbling through her mind, Naminé started to slip in and out of dreamless sleep. For a few hours, it was almost peaceful. It had been so long...

The phone went off sometime after daylight, ringing loudly from the living room. An only half-understandable "your turn" slipped out of her mouth before she remembered, when the phone abruptly stopped ringing and then started again. She answered it this time.

"Hello?"

"_Hey,"_ came the sound of Roxas's voice._ "Thought you might not be home for a minute." _He laughed, the not quite sincere sound coming through in a burst of static.

"I couldn't get it quick enough," she replied. "I was in another room." At least it wasn't technically a lie, even if it wasn't the entire truth.

If Roxas could tell, he didn't seem bothered by it. _"Yeah."_ He paused before continuing, long enough that Naminé started to ask if he was still there. _"Isa was wondering if you minded coming over for a little while later," _he finally said, a bit awkwardly._"He said he'd probably be back around two or so."_

"...Why?" Roxas had asked her to visit many times, mostly because it was easier for her to do so than the other way around, but it was a rarity that Isa asked. Usually, if he did, then it was a sign of bad news, sometimes immediately and sometimes far off in the future.

"_I dunno." _She could practically see him shrugging. _"I guess he just wants to see you or something. It's kind of been a while. Or something"_

"A week," Naminé corrected him. "I was there last week."

"_...He just told me to ask you, okay? He didn't tell me why."_

She gripped the phone harder in her hand. "Okay. I'll see you later."

* * *

"Are you all right now?"

"Of course," Ienzo answered. Why wouldn't he be all right after having one of the worst moments of his life and what certainly _was _his worst decision shoved in his face again, some terrible, irrational nightmare trying to convince him the former was _all his fault _and-

_Stop. _His hands tightened around his knees, easy when he was curled up on himself so much, almost in a ball. He took another shallow breath.

"I'm fine."

"It was only a dream," Aeleus reminded him, not for the first time since morning, setting a hand on his shoulder.

It was only a dream. Which was why there was no explanation for why his hands were stained with darkness and covered with the black, bleeding marks. "I know," he said anyway.

There wasn't a explanation for why a new dead voice kept laughing in his head, kept telling him what a wonderful job he had done of finally, truly getting rid of that treacherous obstacle that had been foolish enough to get in his way.

Aeleus was looking at him in concern, saying something he couldn't make out over the roar in his ears, and he realized his hands had started shaking again. Another voice was laughing now, with the one of so many names, so loud, not stopping, and couldn't they just— "Shut up," he choked out, not realizing he had said it out loud, pressing his hands over his ears even though he _knew _it was a futile effort.

The hand on his shoulder tightened, but he didn't turn around, didn't even look up, for fear that it wouldn't be real either. Touch was just another sense for it to steal from him, mutate and manipulate, then finally return after it had been broken to the point of not being of any use, after all. What would stop it?

* * *

"Hi," Naminé called as she slipped inside the door, shutting it behind her. Roxas and Isa were across the room, a book spread out between them.

"Hey." Roxas smiled at her, and she could see that the nervous laugh from earlier extended to his smile now. Isa must have told him.

"I need to speak with you," Isa told her, standing up and walking over to her.

_Please, don't be bad news. _"Roxas told me," she replied, looking down at the floor just so she didn't have to meet his eyes, simultaneously trying to brace for the worst and convince herself she didn't need to.

"There has been some discussion over the past several weeks about whether or not you and Ienzo should remain in the same house," he told her, bluntly skipping past almost any semblance of pleasantries.

She balked. But they—but it—"We're fine," she insisted, feeling her stomach knot in fear. _Please no, please, please. _"We're _fine_!" Please.

"We reached a decision today," he said, one meaningful look all but confirming what she feared.

"We're fine, though," she repeated, feeling about to cry, eyes already becoming slightly wet. Oh, light, please...

"It's only in your best interest."

That was what people always said, so she had heard, when they wanted you to listen to them. She shook her head, angry and distressed. "Please just let us try again," she pleaded, almost begging.

"If you both improve, that is our current plan." If. Current.

_Whoever, whatever, listens to me, please just give us one more chance. Just one more._

* * *

A week later, in a mostly empty house, they were both home just long enough to say good-bye.

"I'll miss you," Naminé murmured, holding on to Ienzo's hand like it was a lifeline.

"It likely won't be for very long," he tried to assure her, quietly.

"I know. It's just..." She had had so many bad days in the past week, without him. Her dreams may have been strangely calm, but, oh, her memory... "What if I don't remember you?" she wondered.

"This is supposed to improve it, for both of us," he said, seeming to evade her question. 'Supposed to'. She hoped.

She turned to hug him tightly, whispering with the faintest hint of a smile. "Sweet dreams."

He gave a short, little laugh. "Fond memories."


End file.
